


Hers

by repmetsyrrah



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/repmetsyrrah/pseuds/repmetsyrrah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sybil thinks about life with her chauffeur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hers

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [His](http://archiveofourown.org/works/339562). Originally posted [here](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/46205.html?thread=7421053#cmt7421053) on DW for Porn Battle XIII. This isn’t incredibly porny but it’s in there a little. It’s more implied than explicit but I'm more a fan of implied, hopefully some other people are too.
> 
> Prompts: words, wedlock

\--

Her husband was asleep.

_Husband_. She loved that word, she loved referring to him by it. 

_This is my husband, Tom._

_My husband is a journalist._

_I was talking to my husband this morning about it._

_My husband and I are going to the theatre tonight._

It had gotten to the point half the nurses in the ward where she worked hadn’t even known his name and wondered who this handsome man named Tom who’d come to see her for lunch was.

She couldn’t help it, it was a little thrill every time she said it. If she had been able to she would have yelled it from the roof. 

_Tom Branson is my husband!_

Tom (her husband) found it rather funny but she’d grown up in a world where a husband was someone who your parents would suggest and who you would marry for reasons all too often so far removed from your own personal feelings that she sometimes felt the world she’d been born into held no connection between the words ‘marriage’ and ‘love’. Often it’d be someone you were fond of but Sybil couldn’t imagine calling any of them “husband” and feeling the same giddiness she felt knowing it referred to Tom.

She smiled as she stretched slightly, careful not to wake him. She was lying on his chest, having slept on top of him the whole night, another of her habits he found amusing (though not at all unpleasant). She didn’t know why herself, the bed was very comfortable but he was even more so. They were both completely and utterly naked and Sybil didn’t mind at all, had someone told her when Branson had first been hired that one day she’d find herself completely comfortable being unclothed with him she’d have had a quite word to Cousin Isobel about their mental state.

She’d expected to feel shy on her wedding night, disrobing in front of a man for the first time and then what followed… But it hadn’t just been any man, it had been him, her _husband_ , the man she loved and how could she feel embarrassed when he’d been so loving, so gentle and patient with her. For the first time she’d truly believe he meant it when he’d told her he would devote every waking moment to her happiness.

It had hurt for her, the first time and he’d been upset but promised her it got better. She trusted him, of course she had, and he’d been right. _So_ right, she remembered with a smile. She had let him teach her everything about what happened in a marriage bed, let him teach her about herself too. She couldn’t believe there’d been so much about her own body she hadn’t known or understood and he had showed her everything.

He shifted slightly underneath her, still asleep and she thought about the night before, they’d been planning to go down to the tavern to relax and see some friends but Sybil had just been to see the doctor and Tom (her husband) had been in equal parts stunned, deliriously happy and utterly terrified at the news he was to be a father. 

Happiness had won out though, he’d kissed her soundly and they’d eventually ended up in bed, which neither of them had been at all sad about.

And that was another thing Sybil had never imagined with the men she’d been expected to marry. She’d liked some of them but it was hard, downright impossible really, to imagine sharing her bed with any of them as willingly and as happily as she did with the husband she had chosen.

Oh, she could have had sex with them. Sex, that old, clinical word that was better suited to textbooks. Sex, the thing she’d had to learn about in hushed whispers and the medical textbooks for her nurses training. The thing that in her old life, was needed only to produce an heir, then you had your separate beds, unless it was a girl. After which, you did your duty again. Until you got it right.

She knew she didn’t do that with her husband. It wasn’t just a way to have children, though they had done that now as well, she thought with a smile but most of the time she took her husband to bed for the sheer joy of it, simply to show him how much she loved him and he would return the sentiment without hesitation.

Several years ago he’d taken her hand at a garden party and at the time it had probably been the most scandalous thing she’d ever done. She’d known other female members of the aristocracy interested in politics but even they would never had dreamed of touching a chauffeur like Sybil had then.

She couldn’t help but grin at the thought of what they’d say if they knew she’d run off with him. If they knew she’d married him, that she now shared her bed with someone who’d been her _servant_. She didn’t think they did know though, Granny was awfully good at taking care of matters like that.

Last night, as she’d watched him shatter beneath her, after he’d made her come apart, crying his name, and then gathered her back up in his arms, she knew she would never have been that happy anywhere else.

With anyone else.

They could have their grand houses, their sprawling estates and hoards of servants, their fancy frocks and their lives of idleness, their Seasons and gossip.

She had her chauffeur, her _husband_ and she’d never want anything else.

\--


End file.
